- 50/50. Directed by Jonathan Levine. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen.
Rating: 9 (out of 10)
NO one should get cancer. But we especially hate it when young people get it. And it seems particularly cruel when cancer hits one of the good guys.
Twenty-seven-year-old Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one of the good guys. He waits for the light when he's jogging, even when there's no traffic. He suffers through the hysterics of his inconsiderate girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard), and his worst sin is waiting too long before calling his mom. "I don't drink, I don't smoke, I recycle," Adam protests, when he gets the diagnosis from the world's most inconsiderate doctor.
"Have you ever seen Terms of Endearment?" is how Adam chooses to break the news to his mom (Anjelica Huston), who is already taking care of Kyle's dad, suffering from Alzheimers. Mom wants to move in, but Adam is determined to deal with it on his own.
He's not exactly alone. Adam's best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) is there to provide as much moral support as he is capable of. So Kyle occasionally uses Adam's cancer to pick up girls, and feels more than justified in getting a prescription for medicinal marijuana (it's for him, not for Adam). Kyle provides the lion's share of the comic relief in a story that could have taken a morbid turn, turning it into a stoner Sweet November.
Adam starts chemo, and makes new friends (Philip Baker Hall and Matt Frewer). Introductions are made: names first, diagnosis second. "The more syllables, the worse it is," says Alan, before offering Adam a pot-laden macaroon.
Adam is referred to a psychiatrist, Dr. McKay (Anna Kendrick), who isn't even out of school. Adam is sceptical, amused, and occasionally angered by her tactics as he cycles through the stages of acceptance and she vascillates between textbook doctoring and real human compassion.
Gordon-Levitt plays it perfectly as a regular, soft-spoken guy who is numb to his predicament, and frustrated at having to expend energy comforting his family and friends, instead of the other way around. It will all come to a head, of course, and Adam eventually breaks down (in Vancouver's Stanley Park) in a dramatically realistic scene.
The script, too, is admirably low-key. 50/50 doesn't beat us with the cancer thing, neither does it overplay the tear-jerker moments, of which there are plenty. And this is a Seth Rogen movie, after all, so you can bet that a tender moment will be quickly followed up by a pee joke.
Thankfully, filmmakers deny the frat-boy temptation to play the side-effects of chemotherapy for laughs (vomiting occurs off-camera) and keep post-surgery ickiness to a minimum. This is not the Operation Channel. And early indications show that audience members aren't squeamish about a cancer comedy: director Adam Levine (The Wackness) got a standing ovation at the Toronto Film Festival a few weeks back.
Rogen and writer Will Reiser were living together and working on Sacha Baron Cohen's Da Ali G show, when, at age 25, Reiser got sick. The script was his catharsis and "became a passion project for all of us," Rogen says on the film's website. In doing so, Reiser, Levine and the cast have crafted one of the best buddy movies in years.
